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If you are new here, you may want to learn a little more about how this site works. Eat Your Books has indexed recipes from leading cookbooks and magazines as well recipes from the best food websites and blogs.

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Biography

Chad Robertson is co-owner along with his wife, renowned pastry chef Elisabeth Prueitt, of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. Chad is from West Texas, and three generations of handmade boot and saddle makers. He eventually took a turn to cooking and then to breadmaking, leading him to the same school as Elisabeth, The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, where they attended both the culinary arts program as well as the primary years of the new Baking and Pastry program to become early double graduates. After his training at the CIA, Chad apprenticed at the Berkshire Mountain Bakery with renowned baker Richard Bourdon which led to several years baking there. The couple eventually relocated to the west coast where Chad worked and consulted as a baker before their travels took them abroad. In 1994 Elisabeth and Chad married, traveled, trained, and cooked in France for a year. They worked primarily in two bakeries, one in the south of France and the other in the northern Savoie region, both wood-fired oven bakeries specializing in natural fermentation- modern, traditional breads, and regional pastries and desserts. Upon their return, they opened their first bakery in 1995, Bay Village in Point Reyes Station just north of the Golden Gate in West Marin County. They lived and worked baking everything themselves for six years there with a quick stop in Mill Valley and a small retail shop on their way to San Francisco. They became known for remarkable bread baked in a wood-fired brick oven and rustic, elegant pastry marrying local ingredients with classical technique. Chad was singled out by Alain Ducasse for his extraordinary bread making in his book on artisan American food producers prior to opening his restaurant in the US- ‘Harvesting Excellence’, published in 2000. In the summer of 2002 Elisabeth and Chad moved their life and business to San Francisco’s thriving food community centered at the corner of 18th and Guerrero Streets in the Mission district and opened Tartine Bakery where Elisabeth continues to delight customers who line up for her cookies, tarts, cakes, confections. Chad and his small team of bakers continue to make their distinctive bread in relatively small quantities most days available hot in the afternoon.